Review: SCAM (REDRAFT)

Script review for triggerstreet.com

SCAM (REDRAFT) - by Ross McQueen

Scam is a script that wears its heart on its sleeve. It should open with a flashing neon sign that screams “Tarantino is God!” It’s a dialogue heavy, non-linear, heist caper – heavily influenced by Pulp Fiction. This isn’t a problem for me, I’ve always enjoyed this approach and there continues to be a healthy market for this style of writing – I’d point to Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin’ Aces and RocknRolla as three more recent contemporaries.

The writer handles the non-linear structure with a great deal of aplomb, layering the scenes in such a way as to keep the audience repeatedly reconfiguring their understanding of the linear chain of events. It’s an effective technique, making it challenging to get a handle on the story and predict where we’re going – it keeps the audience guessing. It takes a great deal of planning and organisation to implement this approach with the degree of success present in Scam and the writer should be proud of their achievement.

Once reconfigured the overall scam story is complex, interesting and mostly well interconnected. Many threads have issues with character (which I’ll move onto shortly) but there’s only one problem I spotted with the plotting itself.

One thread is currently too isolated, that of Randal trying to muscle into The Shark’s territory. We see The Sharks catch and torture Randal’s dealer, we see Randal, Boss and String at the dealer’s bedside and we see Boss lend Randal String, and his subsequent campaign to deprive The Sharks of Nuke and Three before the gang-war kicks off. The only flaw in this chain of events is that String specifically says that leaving the dealer’s body to be found was The Sharks’ way of sending a message that they are coming for Randal. The Sharks never follow this up, Nuke and Three are never sent after Randal, the ‘gang-war’ never materialises, and String’s undercover campaign is entirely one-sided. This seems like the only missing link in your web of plots. If The Sharks have just forgotten about Randal (as they seem to have) it undermines their plausibility as terrifying gang leaders – they should be more efficient. You don’t need to add much to rectify this oversight, just remind the audience that The Sharks are still pursing Randal so that when he and String re-enter the story it’s been adequately foreshadowed rather than eliciting the ‘wait a minute, who are this faction?’ reaction (which it currently does).
I have three recommendations to help with this – firstly rename ‘dealer’. This is only a script issue (it wouldn’t matter for the actual film), but ‘dealer’ is a completely generic title so when we’re reintroduced to the character 45 pages after his last appearance it’s not immediately obvious who we’re dealing with (I got it once I read on, but it would’ve helped to make that connection faster) – a distinctive name would help with this. Secondly, let the audience hear the tortured dealer screaming the name Randal – it won’t mean anything at the time, but it will assist the audience in piecing the threads together once Randal’s introduced. Finally, the scene where Nuke and Three chase and kill a nobody called Tom – currently this scene demonstrates an average day in the life of Nuke and Three, except Nuke is out of character and kills Tom when he shouldn’t – but Tom himself is just a debtor they’re chasing up. Re-write that sequence to include Randal escaping in some way and make Tom part of his organisation – that way you foreshadow The Sharks war with Randal without adding any extra scenes.

(after writing all this I just realised that Nuke kills the dealer before Emily can extract a name from him, which is why The Sharks never go after Randal – but String assumes they’re coming. I was reading fairly carefully and I didn’t catch that misunderstanding over the body in the road – I can’t help but feel that device is a gamble! When Randal and String enter the story (as String rather than the detective) it’s a long way back to the dealer (who seemed an incidental character) being shot, so when Boss and String explain the situation to Randal the audience is inclined to accept their assessment - you’re asking the audience a lot if you expect them to cast their mind back and spot the inconsistency that the dealer died before giving up Randal’s name so they’re acting on false assumptions. If the audience don’t catch that, you hit the issue I previously outlined about why The Sharks aren’t fighting back. I recommend either re-jigging the dealer’s torture that he does give-up the name before he dies, or re-jigging the scenes with the boss to remind the audience that actually he didn’t, and they’re acting on false assumptions.)

The main area the writer needs to focus on is character development. The characters, as currently written, are reasonably good. They’re plausible, interesting and occasionally quirky – a good range and balance. Unfortunately, for a script utilising a non-linear structure as Scam does, that’s not good enough. There’s a large cast involved and many characters only receive a limited amount of screen time – there’s little opportunity for them to grow and arc – they need to be captivating characters from the second they appear and each and every one needs to be visually distinct and memorable.

One easy amendment would be the character introduction lines. Currently they’re brief, verging on non-existent – the writer is largely dependant on dialogue to express identity. For example, Nuke and Three’s introduction:

”After a moment Dealer is carried back by NUKE. Nuke has no
difficulty carrying the sizable Dealer.
THREE walks in behind. Three is a big, imposing guy, but
there is something scarier about Nuke.”

So… physical descriptions? Three is big and imposing, and Nuke is scarier looking and can still carry a sizeable man. And… that’s it? Are either of them black, white or Asian? How do they dress? Do either of them have distinguishing hair? Facial hair? A habit for wearing shades? Does Three wear lots of bling?

Criminals are well explored on screen and little visuals clues can say an awful lot about what type of character they are and what sort of vibe they transmit.

The same goes for every character in the script – the writer introduces them with the absolute minimum amount of physical description, which makes it difficult to visualise them as more than generic shapes with distinctive voices. A little flair in those character descriptions would go a long way.

In the same way, a little more flair in several of the characters development would help the intricate plotting to breathe much more vividly than it currently does. Jonathon and the stoners in particular seem a little flat, whereas others like Nuke, Emily and Ian feel like they never quite live up to their potential.

Take Nuke, his name suggests a penchant for going nuclear. When I think of someone going nuclear, we’re talking all-out destruction – you’re lucky if the buildings are left standing! Yet Nuke seems coldly clinical – he shoots the dealer, throws Tom off the roof and clubs Three with a toilet seat. None of these violent acts justifies the name Nuke. Being betrayed by Three should unleash his full fury – that’s where I want to see a psycho going nuclear. That scene should be a destructive rampage – instead it’s like a premature ejaculation, so underwhelming it’s embarrassing.

Emily and Ian are set-up well as chirpy-psycho gang-lords, yet when we get down to the most distinctive aspect of a gangsters regime – how they punish their enemies (eg Brick Top from Snatch feeds his enemies to his pigs) – Emily and Ian fall-back on a traditional torture routine. Again, the flair is in the dialogue but you need some flair in the torture too. My first thought on this was that they have a childlike-glee about them and Emily approaches torture like play-time. Imagine if Emily liked putting make-up on her victims before she tortured them – turning them into china-dolls for her to play with? That would carry some visual impact – get creative!

String, with his Art of War quotes and baoding-balls is great – except his description ‘a big imposing guy’ – needs a little something/anything more!

These character are all nearly there – but Jonathon, the stoners, Wanda and Kelly all needs more pizzazz to make them worthy of a place on the big-screen.

My penultimate recommendation is about ‘drugs’. There’s no such thing as ‘drugs’. There’s cocaine, crack cocaine, speed, heroin, ecstasy pills, M.D.M.A., acid, P.C.P., mescaline, ketamine, etc. The exact contents of the drugs packages are always left vague and the effects on Wanda of the drugs she does with Nuke and Three left me wondering what exactly they were meant to be doing – the lack of specification and the somewhat fantasy combination of traits wasn’t convincing. Pick one specific drug to be in the package and another for Wanda to do – then name them specifically in the script – it’s only a little detail but it’s also the loot in your scam so needs to be right.

My final thought it the title – I don’t think it does much for you, it’s too generic and the script is better than that. For example, Lucky Number Slevin is basically a scam movie, but in that they gave the scam one name, The Kansas City Shuffle, and the movie another based on the name of a key horse in the back-story. Again, get creative!

I hope you’ve found my review helpful, if you’d like to discuss any of the suggestions made please don’t hesitate to get in touch – Scam is a very good script and I enjoyed working on ways it could be further improved.